A Dao of Web Design at 15

John Allsop reflects on A Dao of Web Design, originally published 15 years ago, and the web today:

Perhaps those advocating this position, that progressive enhancement is old fashioned and quaint, that the Web is dead or dying because native apps are better, are right. Perhaps the idea of an application is the apotheosis of the very idea of human computer integration, and the Web, in falling short, well, in being different, is an evolutionary dead end.

But I continue to believe, just as the Web is not print, though it emerged in many ways from the medium of print, it is not just another application platform. It has its own genius, which we could call as I did all those years ago, adaptability.

This is a position that I will have a very hard time letting go of, but one that I find increasingly difficult to uphold with beginners or those who “weren’t around” at the time—and even, I think, people who were but never fully bought into the idea of “progressive enhancement”. The problem is still, I think, one of articulation. We need better explanations for what the web is, why it is important, and why anyone should care.

That, or, we simply need to step aside and let the upcoming generation come to their own conclusions in this regard, perhaps with better and more robust solutions than came before.